“Don’t be flurried,” Knight continued. “So long as we stay above this block we are perfectly safe. Wait a moment whilst I consider what we had better do.”
He turned his eyes to the dizzy depths beneath them, and surveyed the position of affairs.
Two glances told him a tale with ghastly distinctness. It was that, unless they performed their feat of getting up the slope with the precision of machines, they were over the edge and whirling in midair.
For this purpose it was necessary that he should recover the breath and strength which his previous efforts had cost him. So he still waited, and looked in the face of the enemy.
The crest of this terrible natural façade passed among the neighbouring inhabitants as being seven hundred feet above the water it overhung. It had been proved by actual measurement to be not a foot less than six hundred and fifty.
That is to say, it is nearly three times the height of Flamborough, half as high again as the South Foreland, a hundred feet higher than Beachy Head—the loftiest promontory on the east or south side of this island—twice the height of St. Aldhelm’s, thrice as high as the Lizard, and just double the height of St. Bee’s. One sea-bord point on the western coast is known to surpass it in altitude, but only by a few feet. This is Great Orme’s Head, in Caernarvonshire.
And it must be remembered that the cliff exhibits an intensifying feature which some of those are without—sheer perpendicularity from the half-tide level.
Yet this remarkable rampart forms no headland: it rather walls in an inlet—the promontory on each side being much lower. Thus, far from being salient, its horizontal section is concave. The sea, rolling direct from the shores of North America, has in fact eaten a chasm into the middle of a hill, and the giant, embayed and unobtrusive, stands in the rear of pygmy supporters. Not least singularly, neither hill, chasm, nor precipice has a name. On this account I will call the precipice the Cliff without a Name.1
What gave an added terror to its height was its blackness. And upon this dark face the beating of ten thousand west winds had formed a kind of bloom, which had a visual effect not unlike that of a Hambro’ grape. Moreover it seemed to float off into the atmosphere, and inspire terror through the lungs.
“This piece of quartz, supporting my feet, is on the very nose of the cliff,” said Knight, breaking the silence after his rigid stoical meditation. “Now what you are to do is this. Clamber up my body till your feet are on my shoulders: when you are there you will, I think, be able to climb on to level ground.”
“What will you do?”
“Wait whilst you run for assistance.”
“I ought to have done that in the first place, ought I not?”
“I was in the act of slipping, and should have reached no standpoint without your weight, in all probability. But don’t let us talk. Be brave, Elfride, and climb.”
She prepared to ascend, saying, “This is the moment I anticipated when on the tower. I thought it would come!”
“This is not a time for superstition,” said Knight. “Dismiss all that.”
“I will,” she said humbly.
“Now put your foot into my hand: next the other. That’s good—well done. Hold to my shoulder.”
She placed her feet upon the stirrup he made of his hand, and was high enough to get a view of the natural surface of the hill over the bank.
“Can you now climb on to level ground?”
“I am afraid not. I will try.”
“What can you see?”
“The sloping common.”
“What upon it?”
“Purple heather and some grass.”
“Nothing more—no man or human being of any kind?”
“Nobody.”
“Now try to get higher in this way. You see that tuft of sea-pink above you. Get that well into your hand, but don’t trust to it entirely. Then step upon my shoulder, and I think you will reach the top.”
With trembling limbs she did exactly as he told her. The preternatural quiet and solemnity of his manner overspread upon herself, and gave her a courage not her own. She made a spring from the top of his shoulder, and was up.
Then she turned to look at him.
By an ill fate, the force downwards of her bound, added to his own weight, had been too much for the block of quartz upon which his feet depended. It was, indeed, originally an igneous protrusion into the enormous masses of black strata, which had since been worn away from the sides of the alien fragment by centuries of frost and rain, and now left it without much support.
It moved. Knight seized a tuft of sea-pink with each hand.
The quartz rock which had been his salvation was worse than useless now. It rolled over, out of sight, and away into the same nether sky that had engulfed the telescope.
One of the tufts by which he held came out at the root, and Knight began to follow the quartz. It was a terrible moment. Elfride uttered a low wild wail of agony, bowed her head, and covered her face with her hands.
Between the turf-covered slope and the gigantic perpendicular rock intervened a weatherworn series of jagged edges, forming a face yet steeper than the former slope. As he slowly slid inch by inch upon these, Knight made a last desperate dash at the lowest tuft of vegetation—the last outlying knot of starved herbage ere the rock appeared in all its bareness. It arrested his further descent. Knight was now literally suspended by his arms; but the incline of the brow being what engineers would call about a quarter in one, it was sufficient to relieve his arms of a portion of his weight, but was very far from offering an adequately flat face to support him.
In spite of this dreadful tension of body and mind, Knight found time for a moment of thankfulness. Elfride was safe.
She lay on her side above
